Long View of Life
by Cassie Jamie
Summary: It feels like I've intruded on a family, the redheaded stepchild you're all waiting to screw up so you can send them to their room.
1. Chapter One

**Disclaimer:** Completely not mine.  
**Summary:** _It feels like I've intruded on a family, the redheaded stepchild you're all waiting to screw up so you can send them to their room._  
**Notes:** AU, Greg-centric. OCs, WIP.

**Long View of Life**

;;

In the end, it hadn't been the casework or the victims that had broken him. It hadn't been his colleagues, his evaluations, his place in the lab... It wasn't Grissom's criticisms or Nick's jokes, Warrick's sharp wit. Hell, Catherine's attitude hadn't done it.

No, what had split him into pieces like a ragdoll tore in a child's fight had nothing to do with the present and everything to do with the past.

;;

"You're late."

Greg stopped short as he left the locker room, having been hopeful that no one had noticed his quiet appearance in the labs forty-five minutes after the start of the Graveyard shift. He cursed under his breath as he turned to face Sara, who was smirking at him as she repeated her statement.

"Did Grissom notice?" He asked. Sanders already knew the answer to that question, of course, yet he still prayed that he could escape the wrath of his supervisor.

Sara snorted as she replied, "You should go to his office first. He might show leniency if you turn yourself in."

Without another word, Greg turned on his heel, making his way toward the office of the one man in the world he truly hated to disappoint. He loathed when he let down Grissom, something he was aware he'd been doing a lot lately and though he wanted to, Greg knew he could say little to the man that would explain his screw ups as of late.

He wiped his eyes, still trying valiantly to wake up enough to not look as hungover as he felt, and thought over the list of things that were no doubt being compiled against him. Tardiness, misfiled reports, forgetting procedure... The list was not as small and inane as one would hope.

"You wanted to see me," he announced, reaching the doorway to the elder man's office.

Grissom didn't even speak as Catherine made a break for it, moving by him as though she already knew he was persona non grata and, in all likelihood, she probably did. The office was then empty except for the two men and Greg closed the door before sliding into the vacant chair.

The eyes that took him in were more cold and hard than Greg could ever remember them being. His posture was stiff and his hands were rigid in fists.

"I won't insult either of us by asking if you know why I needed to talk to you. What I want to know is what your explanation is for the number of write ups that are sitting in your personnel file right now." Gil leaned forward, unfurling his fingers and waiting for a response.

When the complaints had rolled in from Brass' men that Greg was making mistakes, he had initially ignored them on the belief that it was just a bad week. Warrick, Nick, Sara, Catherine, himself, they all had times where their brains were on other issues than the work at hand. Time would pass and, so long as no case had been compromised, the complaints would never actually be recorded formally.

Then Greg showed up late two days in a row. He left equipment on in the lab. He was late three more times and nearly crashed one of the department cars. An entire week of reports were filed wrong, the smell of alcohol on Greg's breath when Grissom hunted him down to point out the many errors. Something, Gil was sure, was going on with their youngest CSI and if Greg didn't work it out soon, the Sheriff was going to be calling on both Sanders and Grissom to report to his office.

"I..." Greg started, unsure of what to say. There was so much he wanted to tell his friend and mentor, but legal restrictions made it impossible for him to share the secret that was quietly tearing him apart inside. "I don't know what to say, Gris. I've been kind of preoccupied."

"With?"

"I can't tell you." Greg winced at the sound of his own voice. God, it was such a fucking cop-out to say that, despite it being the truth.

"You can't tell me?" Gil muttered, his tone taking on a slightly more concerned lilt though there was still a stone edge to it as he continued, "Are you all right?"

"I'm here, Grissom, I'm fine." Sanders curved his lips into a small, gentle smile, taking a chance as he asked, "Is there a case I can help with?"

Gil sighed, the tension draining out of him as he regarded the man across the desk. It didn't take a trained investigator to see the exhaustion in the way Greg held himself, the bags under his eyes, the heaviness in his lids. His speech patterns had been laced with the almost imperceptible slur of the punchdrunk, although Grissom wasn't entirely sure that drunkenness didn't play a part in the squint of Greg's eyes. The clothing he wore were, in contrast, immaculate with his badge displayed properly around his neck.

The minutes passed as Grissom made his assessment of his employee, judging whether or not to send the other home even in the face of a long, short-staffed night. It was at his discretion to suspend Greg if he was unable to do his job for personal reasons, but Catherine had called in sick with food poisoning and Nick was still crutch bound after being assaulted by a suspect.

"Greg, do you honestly think you can handle the field right now?" The words had spilled from his lips with a calculated intonation, wondering if he'd get an honest reply or if Greg would lie to his face.

It didn't truly matter, however, as either way, Grissom had already made up his mind on how their conversation would end – and Greg knew it.

He closed his eyes briefly, thinking hard about the options laid before him and the things he could say, and when he opened them, Greg Sanders made a choice that would change everything.


	2. Chapter Two

When Greg had moved to Vegas, he hadn't had enough money to rent an apartment so he'd spent the first six months of his time at the lab living in a seedy motel on the outskirts of the city. It had provided him with his first taste of reality and he'd loved every minute of it, right up to the second when he loaded his belongings into his truck and handed over the key to the desk clerk.

It had also been the only time in his life where he'd been unreachable at his home through the US Postal Service meaning no bills arrived on his doorstep nor any junkmail. All that had been funneled to a PO Box that he had visited once a month to empty and he'd reveled in being able to pick up the packet, bring it to work, and shred all of it without having to look at the contents thanks to online banking.

But once he moved, he'd had to file property taxes and other information as it related to his townhouse and his name went back into much easier to research databases. His name popped up in a google search, for God's sake. In short, it was no longer that difficult for the people he was trying to avoid to find him.

The letters had appeared at first in his mailbox, undated and unaddressed, then taped to his door before whomever was delivering them decided to start shoving them under the door.

They were misleading, the letters, with just his name written in neat, blocky letters on a crisp white envelope and similarly white paper folded into perfect threes. Though he never actually read them, Greg knew exactly whom they were from and why they were being written. He knew what he was risking in not answering, but he couldn't bring himself to do so, even to tell the sender to fuck off.

As expected when he walked in not an hour after he'd left, there was another of the damned things sitting on the floor, caught partially under the door. He snatched it up in one hand, putting his kit down as he shut the door behind him and entered the living room.

Furnishing his home had been secondary to having a roof over his head, so when Greg flopped down on the sofa, it creaked under his weight and the somewhat-stained fabric stretched at the seams. He made a face at the envelope before sliding it onto the paint-chipped coffee table and closing his eyes against the events of the day.

Against the memories he'd been fighting for weeks.

Shoving back the unbidden emotions, Greg reached into his pocket for his cellphone and quickly flipped the lid open, revealing the screen and its notification that he had six text messages. "Archie..." he muttered when he saw the number, knowing precisely why the other man was trying to get ahold of him.

He cleared the message alert from the phone, dialing as he settled more comfortably onto the cushions and waited for someone to pick up. There were a handful of shrill rings in his ear before he was shot to voicemail, "_You've reached Konstantin Novikov. I'm not here at the moment. Please leave a name and number and I'll get __back to you when I've got the time._"

Greg's eyes rolled of their own accord and he snapped the phone shut before tossing it onto the table beside the letter, which caught his eyes suddenly – there was a boot print on it this time, instantly deducing it had been done intentionally.

"Getting annoyed with me, are you?" He said with a smirk at the size twelve military boot smudged in dirt on the back of the envelope. It was too perfect to have been an accident, clearly, but more than that, Greg knew the sender and the person's way of conveying aggravation: it was as much a message as the letter that lay within.

Greg chuckled a little to himself, recalling memories seventeen years old and relaxing further into his sofa. He fell asleep faster than he'd intended, those memories turning to dreams in his mind and replayed with horrifying alterations that grew worse as the hours unconsciously went by.

The banging was what woke him in the wee hours of the morning; pounding on his door that translated to gunshots in his mind until someone yelled his name and then he was up, slinging himself to his feet as he yawned and tried to keep the nausea from overwhelming him.

"Greg!" the yell was muffed through the door but undeniably his name and he resisted the urge to yell back the caller's.

Popping the door open, he came face to face with Nick. His face and arms, the only places with visible skin, had healed without a scar after his kidnapping and looking at him at that moment, Greg realized it'd been a year since that fateful case. Those terrifying hours when none of them knew if they'd find him in time thought they'd never have said that aloud for fear of failing him.

He managed, with great effort, to ignore the crutches and the feelings that had come rushing back when he'd heard the call for a bus.

"You wake up Mrs. James next door, I'm sicking her on you," Greg told him without preamble before turning away from the doorway and headed toward the kitchen.

It was shared space with the rest of the ground floor; the kitchen island the item delineating what area constituted the dining room and beyond that was the living room. It was open and airy and normally a very "Greg" place with music playing loud enough that Mrs. James visited once a week to complain and the TV on, muted, while he cooked something and tried to carry on a phone conversation.

Nick made his way to the sofa without tripping on the fraying rug, collapsing into the sofa and settled the crutches on the floor with a clatter. Once he'd pulled his leg up to lay on the armrest, he turned his gaze to the young man doddering around the kitchen.

Greg was trying to ignore him. And for a few minutes Nick let him do so, taking note of the young man as he moved from the fridge to the door, closing it. Then the younger man turned as though heading for the stairs and Stokes called out, "Hey, you're gonna leave an invalid by himself?"

"You're no invalid, Nick, and you're certainly capable of being by yourself," Greg shot back, but he still changed course and sat down on the recliner opposite the sofa. A quick glance at the clock revealed he'd slept a good six hours – Graveyard would be finishing up their night's work by now – and he groaned at the realization that he may have just thrown his circadian rhythm off with his unexpected nap.

None of that, however, explained Nick's sudden appearance on his doorstep.

"I'm going to be the bigger man and ignore that dig." Nick shifted a bit, trying to make it easier to see Greg and talk at the same time. "You all right? I mean you're normally the best one about getting to the lab on time, getting your reports in, and you are always going on about proper safety with equipment."

"I'm just distracted. Same as I told Grissom so you can go report that to him, okay?" He said, finality in the sound of his voice a clear indication to Nick that Greg did not intend to say anything more about what was bothering the young man.

Of course that only spurred Stokes on, the investigator in him too well ingrained and intrigued. Greg wasn't exactly an open book but he didn't keep his life completely private either. He was loud and boisterous and kept the important stuff to himself, but if he had a problem he couldn't handle by himself, he usually found one of the team to help him.

This was something quite important to him, something Greg didn't want anyone to know about. Nick tossed that through his mind, trying to ignore the growing worry in his belly when the clink of glass hit his ears and he realized Greg had gone to the kitchen for a beer.

Another layer to the fear they all had that Greg was in a downfall: Sanders rarely drank. He'd come out with them and maybe order a drink, but he'd only get through half of it (or less) before asking their waiter for a glass of water.

"You're not distracted, Greg. You're floundering. What's going on?" Nick said after so many moments of silence, watching his friend and trying to hold in his concern.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," was Greg's only answer.

;;

It could never be said that Gil Grissom didn't care about his friends.

He could be abrupt and blunt from time to time, the gaps between filled with enigmatic statements and a somewhat haughty genius, but when it came to those he considered friends, he was there whenever needed. For Sara, that usually meant after-shift with patience and soft questions; for Nick, it was with a fatherly tone the minute he noticed the younger man struggle.

Grissom knew how to handle every one of them – except Greg, who seemed to bounce from one extreme to the other at the drop of a hat. Like his thoughts were speeding through his mind until he could focus on something and then getting him to stop was difficult. He was organized yet still chaotic and there were times Gil wondered how Greg had ever lasted as long as he had in the lab with the state of his car and his field notes.

Sighing, Gil leaned back in his chair, his eyes trained on the African Mantis on the shelf and his hand on his chin. He never noticed Catherine open his office door and slide inside, her mouth curved into a knowing smirk.

"Penny for them."

Grissom startled and sat up straighter, eyes whipping to the woman. He chuckled softly when he saw the look of amusement on her face, saying, "I'm trying to figure out Greg."

"Figure out Greg..." She muttered, voice laden with concern. "Have you talked to him since the other day?"

"No. No, Nick went over there but Greg brushed him off." Gil pulled his glasses off and asked, "Has he had any problems with the cases before this started? Anything that indicated that he might be unable to handle the work?"

The face she made in response to that was a mixture of confusion and sadness. "He was handling everything fine. He left his notepad in the truck twice and he nearly forgot his kit once, but that's just Greg." She settled into the chair with her arms up on the rests and asked, "Are you going to go over there?"

"I don't know if he'd let me in and it's frustrating me, Catherine. We all react to the persona he shows and the childish antics, but I have no idea how to relate to him," he explained, "I don't know how to get him to talk to me."

"Well, you'll figure it out. If only because I'll bet he doesn't know how to relate to you either." Getting to her feet, Catherine reached out onto his desk and snatched the case sheet from the top of a stack of papers. "And seeing as I've just taken your 405 on Helena Ave, you have no reason to avoid him."

"Catherine..." He warned, though he already knew it was a lost cause. She was the only one in the unit who could successfully order him around and, worse, she was completely aware of that fact. So much so that without a word more, she turned and left.

Gil watched her leave silently, wondering precisely how brave he was as Catherine disappeared from his sight.


	3. Chapter Three

The funny thing, Grissom realized at the last light before Greg's complex, was that Greg had been working at the lab before Nick, Warrick, or Sara. There were others, of course, that had been there before the people he thought of as "his team", but despite all that time, all those years where Sanders was a fixture over microscopes and machinery, Gil had never asked about the other man's life.

Bonding with one of lab's scientists, though Grissom considered himself to be one, had never been a priority, and that had to be reconciled.

But it still irked him that he had never truly befriended Greg, as he had with Hodges. Perhaps, he thought while passing through the unlocked gate toward Unit 42, it had to do with the fact that even with the information Greg spat at them, there was always a feeling of unease under it all, as though he were only telling partial truths and contorting the rest.

Grissom didn't like secrets. He liked puzzles and riddles, things that could be figured out and brought to light. Could it be that the problem with their relationship lay with the cloudy depths of a secret that Greg didn't want to reveal?

His thoughts trailed away as he looked at the door before him. It was just a simple white door, nothing notable about it and he reached for the gold knocker identical to the one placed on all the homes, tapping it firmly onto the matching gold plate.

Noises – rustling, feet padding, a thud, and cursing – floated to him from the kitchen window to his right. With a metallic pop, the deadbolt flipped back, the door yanked open, and Greg sighed tiredly, saying, "I figured you'd show up." He stepped to the side, holding onto the edge of the door white-knuckled. "Come in," he added after a moment of silence passed.

Grissom, having been standing in the doorway completely unsure of himself, startled into movement and nodded to himself, walking into uncharted territory.

He'd never been inside Greg's house before, though he had, on several occasions, dropped him off after marathon shifts when driving just wasn't an option for the young man lest he wind up under Doc Robbin's knife. It was surprisingly sparse, the furniture a slightly odd mishmash of gray, black, dark blue, and brown with sheer curtains over the windows.

"Okay, grand tour..." Greg announced, "To your right is the kitchen where I'd offer you something, but all I've got is stale bread and ketchup. In front of you is the living room, feel free to sit if you want. That door there," he pointed, singling out what would have looked like a large window but for the handle, "leads to the patio. And these stairs here go upstairs, but I haven't done laundry in a couple days so just pretend I sleep on my couch."

Gil nodded, still taking in that Greg lived here in this place that didn't seem at all like him. Greg hadn't seemed to have put any care into his home, ignoring appearances and possibly comfort. He continued walking when Sanders swept past him to sprawl out on an aging recliner that rocked back with a creak; Grissom settled onto the couch, wincing when he felt a piece of the wood frame dig into his back.

The awkwardness that filled the air between them was palpable, both men waiting for the other to start yet neither making a move to. A standoff of sorts and finally, Gil asked, "Why are you so insistent that everything is fine when you're falling apart?"

"Who says I'm falling apart?" Greg asked in kind, amused for some reason by the notion that he was having a breakdown. He knew he was, but it still was somehow full of humor that other people had noticed it.

"No one's saying it, Greg – we're all seeing it though. The reports, the alcohol, the driving. You went into a scene before it was cleared and if Brass hadn't been there, you'd have wound up like Holly."

The name was like a stab to the heart. She'd been so new she'd squeaked, unsure of her place at CSI and still managed in a matter of hours to win over the people she had met. Greg had had little contact with her those first and second and only cases, but even he had felt the devastation of her loss; what it had meant to the others, both outright and symbolically, still burned five years gone.

"And would it have mattered?" He shot back without thinking, the sting of the words smacking Grissom as hard as a slap.

"Yes it would have mattered!" Grissom felt like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking the younger man. "_Would it have mattered?_" rebounded through his mind, pounding at him. "Why would you think it wouldn't?"

"Because it doesn't feel like it. It feels like I've intruded on a family, the redheaded stepchild you're all waiting to screw up so you can send them to their room." He closed his eyes and looked away at the end, looking out the back door at the dark sky beyond it. His mind tossed an insult at him that he could even say that was nothing to the team when he knew that wasn't true and he waited for Grissom's rarely-seen rage come to the surface in defense of the people he worked with.

He was surprised when Grissom told him, even voiced and calm, "I don't think it was us, Greg. I think you've kept yourself apart from us and I don't know why." He paused there for a moment as though he were trying to figure out what to say before he went on, asking him, "What is it that you think we won't believe? What don't you think we'd help you with?"

It was Gil's turn to be caught off-guard when Greg answered, "Dying."

Maybe it was the look on the older's face or the way he opened and closed his mouth, unsure of how to respond to such an admission, but Sanders sighed and laid his head against the recliner. He closed his eyes, blocking out all vision of his supervisor, and began, "I know you'll just keep asking and asking, like I'm one of your bugs. I'm telling you that you're not going to believe me and I know you won't, because I have no evidence to prove that I'm not lying."

"I don't want evidence," Grissom interrupted, "I want to know..."

"What secret I've been keeping from you." Greg's voice was toneless, like he was closing himself off from emotion. He shifted in the seat, trained his eyes on Grissom's and said, "I was born Luka Petrov, grandson of Maksim."

;;

The screen illuminated the A/V lab in shades of virulent green. White writing on a black background seared their eyes as Grissom and Archie stared at the information that caused both their stomachs to roll.

_Luka Petrov_, the display read, _born 1 January 1976, 12:16am._

Archie's mouse clicked as he scrolled down past the grainy, off-color images of a child all too familiar to the rest of the details.

_Place of birth: Arkhangel'sk, Russia._

_Father: Adrik Petrov, deceased._

_Mother: Sasha Petrova, deceased._

_Siblings: Vasily Petrov, brother, deceased._

The next lines chilled Grissom's blood.

_Update to file, 1991: Missing, presumed dead._

_Update to file, 2005: Still missing, however operative within the family informs that subject may have been located by the family assassin "Angel"._

"Archie, seal this search. Notify our contact at the FBI that I need an agent here as soon as possible," he ordered quietly, adding, "And Archie..."

"I won't say anything, Grissom," Johnson cut him off.

"Thanks," Gil said, indescribably grateful, and pulled his cellphone from his pants pocket. The number he dialed was done without thinking, while the wait for the callee to pick up was almost intolerable, Grissom walking quickly toward his office.

Just as the door closed behind him, the phone picked up and he was told, "_I knew you would need evidence before you'd believe me._"

"I needed to be sure," he conceded. "Come to the lab, Greg. You'll be safer here than out in the open and I have Archie getting a hold of our contact at the FBI."

There was a moment of quiet from Sanders, broken when he asked, softly, "_Angel found me, didn't he?_" He sounded resigned, clearly already aware of the answer, and Grissom could hear footfalls then. "_I'll be there in twenty minutes_," Greg's voice had taken on lilt of fear; his breathing had grown heavier, his feet slapping the floor – he was running.

"Don't hang up the phone," Gil said, his heart pounding in his chest suddenly. Greg was terrified of whomever Angel was and that did not sit well with Grissom. He listened to the noises of the younger man opening his car and getting in, the door slamming shut while Greg cursed and the keys fell to the floor. "Greg, I'm going to get Catherine and let her know what's going on."

"_Yeah_," Greg murmured, the word almost lost in the engine turning over. There was the click of the car being put into gear, air past the windows.

That was all that could be heard for several long minutes. The hard breeze of air as Gil found Catherine in the Trace Lab and detailed the problem at hand, the flitting of wind as the rest of the team found the pair and, in whispers, talked about their colleague, the secret that could find him in the morgue. Then Greg murmured something unintelligible, and Grissom called, "Greg? You okay?"

"_Grissom,_" he choked, "_Do me a favor – I have a cousin, Konstantin. He goes to school in New York, high school student. Tell your agent to protect him, okay? Tell him I love him_." Greg stopped for a moment, breathing in and the blood in Catherine's veins turned to ice as he went on, "_Angel cut my brakes. I can't talk and avoid cars, so, um... Goodbye._"

Willows grabbed the phone, yelling, "Greg, don't you dare hang up!"

There was screeching now, audible even as the roar of the wind became a high-pitched whistle and Greg was screaming at people. Horns were honking, the sound of rubber on pavement as people hit brakes, and then over the howl of blood rushing in their ears, each member of the team heard the crash; the shatter of glass, the airbag deploying, and the blow of a stuck horn.


	4. Chapter Four

Antiseptic. Florescent. Soft words. Stiff sheets.

"Pizdets," Greg murmured as his eyes opened to the glaring brightness of the overhead lighting and a faint, lackluster laugh escaped his lips at the realization that he had survived crashing his car into an office building's dark lobby.

"Pizdets..." someone repeated in a questioning tone. "That's Russian?"

He didn't need to turn his head, didn't need to look to the man seated at his left to know it would be Grissom there. And shocking as it was, given when the lab had blown up around him and he had been flung through a plate-glass window, Grissom had not come near the hospital, Greg couldn't bring himself to remark on it. Instead, he responded, "Yeah," and asked, "Is there water?"

"Ice chips," Gil replied, picking up the cup and helping Greg to get one into his mouth. Without prompting, he told the other, "They have you on some strong painkillers to deal with your injuries. You impacted the steering wheel hard enough to crack several ribs, bruise your sternum, and when the front end crumpled from the crash, both of your ankles fractured. And it would have been nice if you'd mentioned that you are a mild hemophiliac to someone before we had to go digging through your personnel file."

Sanders groaned. He'd dealt with rib fractures, bruises, sprains, and similar injuries in the past, mostly in another lifetime, and all of them, fractured ankles was the worst. Between the soreness that would accompany the healing and the physical therapy that would make him a far less pleasant person than he already was at the moment, he was in for several weeks of pain.

_If Angel doesn't get to you first_. The melancholic thought brought back the memory of the depressing the brake, expecting the car to slow so he could change lanes and instead finding that the car was continuing at a relatively high but legal speed. He'd attempted to make a turn, but feeling the car rise up on its side was a feeling he'd not soon forget; instead, Greg had kept his foot on the brake pedal in a false hope that it might kick in – as if Angel was anything less than thorough – and found the first decently unoccupied building he could.

"Sara and Nick are on your car. Catherine and Warrick are at your place, and Brass is following up with the post office," Grissom detailed when the look on Greg's face grew grim. "How long were you getting those letters?"

"You weren't supposed to see those," Greg said, ignoring the question and posing one of his own, "Did anyone read them?"

"No one on the team, but Corey in QD has been working on translating them." He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bedrail, his face grew stern as he once again asked, "How long were you getting them, Greg?"

There was something in his voice that left no room for argument and Greg suddenly felt like a child again, facing his father after having broken a rule. He sighed as he admitted, "First one came the day after Nick was released from the hospital."

Grissom forcibly held in the words that threatened to spill from his lips, knowing all the chastisement would do would be to put Greg on the defensive which wouldn't help either of them. Instead he pushed the anger (at himself, at the younger man, at Angel) down and let the investigator in him take over, formulating questions that he was sure Greg knew where forthcoming. "Who's the sender?"

"Maksim Tosha Petrov. Or as he would prefer to be called, even by family, Tsar Maksim." There was an unnatural bitterness in Greg's voice that made Grissom flinch but it went unnoticed by Sanders who only laid there, waiting for the next inquiry.

"Only one of the letters had your prints on it and on the outside..."

"I didn't read them. I knew who they were from, what they wanted and why," Greg stated matter-of-factly, telling Grissom, "What point was there to reading a letter from a man who was just going to order me back to Russia without a care for my life?"

"Paradoxical," Grissom said, confusing his subordinate. "They were asking you to come home and then sent a family assassin after you? Why would your grandfather so quickly change his approach to you?"

"Because I didn't bow to his whim." Greg lifted another piece of ice to his lips, sucking the already melted water from it and crunching down on it weakly. "He was telling me to jump, Grissom, and I didn't do it. He took it as an insult."

"So he'd kill you instead?" Gil was still struggling to make the correlation; it seemed a complete about-face for the leader of one of the largest Crime Families in the world.

"He doesn't take insult well. I once saw him cut out a man's tongue for insulting not just Maksim but my great-grandfather," he explained, the horror of other instances where he'd been privy to the ruthlessness of his family members floating through his mind unbidden. He'd been a boy yet he still wished he'd done something to stop the carnage of men addicted to their own power.

Grissom's lips turned to a thin white line, curious what else Greg had witnessed – what things he had seen that he'd tried to deal with on his own. However, he let that go for the time being, deciding that the battle for Greg to speak with a psychologist could be saved for later. He exhaled hard, saying, "We're going to post two officers on the door until you're released. The FBI has sent an agent familiar with your family..."

"Not my family," Greg shot back with venom in his tone.

Gil corrected himself, "Sorry, the Petrov Family," before going on, "The cousin you identified – Konstantin – has been located and a US Marshal has picked him up to be placed in protective custody. The Marshal who helped you when you first came to the US is on her way as well."

The groan that issued forth from Greg's lips caused Grissom's to curve in an involuntary smile. At least some of the Greg he knew was still there under all the layers of pain and bitterness and secrets. With that thought he told the younger man to get some rest, patted an arm, and left with a single glance back at the two LVPD officers who looked back stoically.

;;

Shannon Killian was a strong-willed woman of Scottish and Irish descent who'd been raised in South Boston and the first time Luka Petrov had met her, holding his young cousin in his arms, he'd immediately teased her for the thick accent so unlike his own.

At first, she'd found the jokes annoying, but as time went on, the weeks passed and Luka became Greg, Stepan became Konstantin, Shannon had grown close to the young man. Their relationship had taken on the fashion of siblings, Greg being the annoying little brother that she'd never actually wanted and yet cherished just the same.

It was perhaps for that reason, that care she had for him, that Shannon had helped the then-teenager when he'd begged to be hidden but not left in the care of the Witness Protection Program. It was where he and Konstantin were supposed to go after all, but Sanders (how quickly she'd learned to think of him by that name) had pleaded to not live his life in secret, terrified of forming relationships with people he'd only end up leaving behind.

Staring at six sets of concerned eyes, she could understand why he'd felt he would grow too attached to his friends. She didn't know how much he discounted himself as such to them.

"Luka came to the United States by way of the Norwegian Embassy in 1992," she explained as she leaned against the side of one of Grissom's shelving units. "He was immediately placed into the custody of the Marshals along with his cousin, Stepan. Their names were changed and we went to painstaking lengths to ensure that no one outside of a handful of people related to the Petrov taskforce knew that the two heirs to the family name had walked right into our hands.

"Anyway, Greg was insistent that he go to school and we allowed him to attend a high school in Manhattan – big city, large number of kids – where he befriended a kid named Joshua Sanders. He was a member of a Norwegian family who welcomed Greg in like one of their own the first time Josh brought him home. It helped us out a great deal that Joshua's uncle, Benjamin, was an agent though what department I can't tell you. He and his wife Marta agreed to take on Greg and Konstantin and with our help, they put Greg through college and Konstantin into a prestigious boarding school in New York."

"He wasn't placed into witness protection?" Sara asked, bemused by the idea that while she might never have met Greg, the program was meant to keep people like the former lab tech from winding up six feet under.

The smile she gave them was humorless, sarcastic. "Because he's a pain in the ass: we tried it and Greg, jackass he can be, walked up to the first person he could, in full view and hearing of a marshal, and said 'my name is Luka Petrov.' Keeping people in the program who are unwilling to follow the rules is dangerous to themselves and to others, so we chose to keep a close eye over him, help keep him from being found as best we can without spiriting him away under cover of night, and tried to ensure no one found out who he was."

Warrick worried his lip for a moment, turning over what Shannon had revealed in his head and trying to recall what little he knew from previous experiences with WPP. One thing stuck out in his mind, digging at him and annoying him, and he finally stated, "You're also supposed to drop the person completely from the program once they've done so. WPP should've washed their hands of him."

"Normally, yes, but we all knew that if we didn't help him, Greg and Konst would have been dead in days if not hours. Angel, as I'm sure you've become aware, is Maksim's left hand and he's the best trained killer they've got, even at his age which I assure you is older than you'd think. He hasn't lasted as long as he has by screwing up his orders," Killian explained, "He was a kid willing to help, but he didn't want to always be leaving people behind, he didn't want Konstantin to have to live a life afraid to get attached to people. Greg always said that he'd sacrifice some of their safety if it meant having a life."

Catherine pinched the bridge of her nose. "You broke protocol for him?" she asked, the thought occurring to her that the government (local or federal) rarely approved of doing so.

"The grandson of the major crime family in the world for the last forty years... Let me think," she replied with a tone somewhat mocking. "It didn't take much to get several bureaus to agree to break the rules for him. He had and still has an understanding of how the family works, information on the way Maksim works, and how members regard each other."

"But he hasn't seen any of them in fifteen years, I assume," Cath threw out to the group, her mind starting to wrap around everything. Lord, but she'd spent the last few days on automatic because she simply couldn't comprehend how their playful, happy Greg could be the grandson of one of the most bloodthirsty and powerful men in the criminal underworld.

Shannon shrugged, admitting, "I can't give you the answers you're looking for. I can't even give you tell you a lot of what happened, but you're the first people that Greg trusted enough to even admit his former name. You cannot afford to not believe him – Angel will take that weakness and show no mercy."

There a stillness that settled in the room then, all uncomfortable as they looked at each other. If they were truthful, they didn't trust Greg as much as it seemed he trusted them and with the news from Grissom that Sanders felt more like an outsider than a colleague, they wondered what they'd say to the man when they next saw him. If they could say anything; the shame of not daring to get close enough to Greg to befriend as anything more than a coworker burning in the pits of several bellies.

Grissom allowed his people a few moments of wallow, having had time himself to do so, before asking, "Tell us about Angel."

"The family's most vicious, efficient, and intelligent assassin. He's eluded capture on a number of occasions and no nation, once they have him, are able to pass a conviction against him," Shannon told him without hesitation.

Shifting, she pulled herself away from the shelving unit and stretched, going on, "His real name is Seriozhenka Levkov and he was born in Moscow in the 1940's. We don't know what year – Greg couldn't say and locating his birth record has proved to be a lesson in futility. He's outlived several prior family guns, some of which were killed on Maksim's orders.

"Greg, again, can't tell us when he began calling himself Angel, but it's short for Angel of Death." She snorted at that, remembering when Sanders had told her, in broken stuttered English, how people spoke in whispers when Angel's name came up: how people had said in a hush that once a target had seen Angel, there was no time to run, only to pray.


	5. Chapter Five

"Stubborn ass," Shannon declared when Greg walked into the lab barely a week after his crash, "You know you're supposed to have the marshals with you when you leave the safehouse."

"Because Angel would cower in fear at the sight of a couple of United States Marshals." His tone was mocking, as it had been on day two of his stay at the hospital when Grissom had remarked on the officers guarding him. A pair of LVPD men, guns or not, wouldn't have even slowed down the assassin, let alone help Greg to feel safe and he'd said as much. And it were the same for the safehouse – federal agents would only have made Angel laugh.

It was that thought that had Greg pacing the length of the home he'd been sequestered to, unable to stop, while his mind raced with thoughts. He'd been eighteen hours away from his sixteenth birthday when Angel had killed his mother and father in front of his eyes, prompting him to run to an uncle and aunt who'd simply handed him their own infant son and saw to it that the two were flown safely out of Russian borders.

Was the thirteen years he'd spent isolated from them too much? Did he really still understand how his former family operated or was that simply an ill-held belief? Would Angel go after him first as was assumed by the cutting of his brakes or should he be more fearful for Konstantin? Questions had run through his mind like a forest fire until had Greg ripped himself from the reverie, slipping into one of the Marshal's sedans and drive directly to the lab.

Moving past the locker room, he sighed and admitted, "I can't sit around all day waiting for him to kill me. I need something to do."

Anything else she could have said was cut off when Greg turned his back to her, heading toward Grissom's office without a look back. He knew himself that he wouldn't have been able to contain the anger within him if he'd looked at Shannon; she was a reminder of a time when he lived in fear of what the next day would bring.

Of a time when he couldn't say who he was after a lifetime of hearing that Luka Petrov was nothing more than the heir to the throne of a blood-driven empire.

He flinched at the memory of who they'd thought he would be – a man who could have handed down orders to kill both criminals and innocents alike. A man with no conscience or soul, hiding behind religion while striking fear even into the heart of priests. Greg could still remember the way men of the cloth had cowered under the weight of Maksim's gaze and how easily they had been cowed into hiding members of the family on church land when it was needed.

Lost in his thoughts, Greg didn't realize he'd stopped walking in the middle of the lab until Catherine's hand came to rest on his shoulder and she called his name softly, still inciting him to startle.

"Sorry," he muttered, unable to look her in the face. Instead, he slid his head to lay against the wall, the air-cooled steel comfortable on his temple and he closed his eyes when Grissom appeared in his line of sight. The concern on his face was as hard to bear as Catherine's.

"You're not supposed to be here," Grissom's disembodied voice told him. "You should be with the marshals."

"I was losing my mind at the safe house waiting for Angel to show up. At least here I can do something useful," he explained, waiting to hear Willows dispute him. He was surprised when he heard her tell Gil to let him stay.

"DNA's backlogged. He'll be in the building and I doubt this Angel would be stupid enough to try getting into the lab with a couple dozen cops milling around," she told the man, fully aware how thrown off Grissom had been since the Marshals had carted Greg off. Unable to watch over and protect a member of his team grated on him and she'd watched as he slowly started the usual behavior associated with one of his annual migraines.

Grissom pretended to think it over for a minute which made Greg glance over at a smirking Catherine. She knew she didn't need to say a word – Greg already knew that it was only for show that he was pausing, a blatant display in front of the federal agents Gil didn't trust. Those who didn't spend time around him would easily mistake the half-frown for frustration or the raised finger for hesitation, but they were decidedly neither.

"Work on the backlog and when you finish I think Trace could use a hand with the triple Warrick's on," Gil told him after another minute passed. His features then hardened, becoming stern, and he said, "Do not leave the building without one of us. Don't call anyone or email. If you're hungry, we'll order in and have Brass deliver it. You understand me?"

"Yeah, I understand you."

"Good." Grissom moved back a step, lifted an eyebrow at Catherine and walked away with case file in hand, feeling a little better than he had a few hours earlier.

He was out of earshot when Catherine followed Greg into the DNA lab, shooing the other techs from the room with a look and asked, "Do you really feel like..." she paused, pulling the words from her memory, "an intruder on a family?"

Greg sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. Perhaps he should have stayed at the safe house where incriminating questions wouldn't have been posed by self-pitying coworkers, trying to assuage their guilt. There, no one would look at him with sad eyes from the other side of a work bench while he tried to figure out what to say that would not sound bitter.

"Greg?" She prodded.

"I feel like you guys are still waiting for me to fuck something up so you can jump up and down on it," he answered. "Like I'm no where near what you want or smart enough to do the simplest task."

"Bullshit." The venom in the tone grabbed Greg's attention and his eyes snapped to Catherine's, who continued, "We're not waiting for you to make a mistake, first of all. If anything we're waiting for the case you can't let go of, the one that haunts you. And if you think for one minute any of us have so much as entertained the thought that you're stupid, then you are."

"There's a vote of confidence," he muttered, just barely missing the glare shot at him.

She ignored the comment, telling him, "You're the first CSI in Vegas who was a lab tech first. If we hadn't wanted you or we thought you couldn't do it, none of us would have gone to Grissom to support you." Catherine shifted slightly, one hip pointed toward the closed door as she threw out, "You're not the redheaded stepchild, but if you think you are, that's your own doing, Greg."

;;

Dinner had, indeed, been ordered and picked up by Jim, who'd decided to take a break with the team over pizza and calzones much to Greg's chagrin. He knew Brass, like Grissom, had been unnerved by the revelation of his family line, though Sanders didn't know precisely how much.

He didn't know how much any of them had been.

Half way through the first pie, Nick could no longer take the awkward and heavy silence that hang in the air. He leaned back on the break room couch, oily paper plate in his lap and half-filled cup of soda in hand, and asked the first thing that popped into his head. "Why does Konstantin go to school in New York?"

"When mom and dad took us in, Konstantin was nearly four and had been showing signs of being pretty intelligent for a long time. Before they'd even met us, he had skipped crawling and gone straight to walking. By eighteen months, he was talking in full sentences. I think it freaked them out a little when they saw how smart was, but they handled it well – got him into a playgroup around kids his own age and then found him a school."

"But a boarding school on the other side of the country? You didn't want him nearby?" Sara was curious now, her half a cheese calzone laying ignored on the table.

"No. In fact, I made it clear to him as soon as he asked that it was safer – they can't get us both at the same time," Greg explained, taking a sip of his water before telling them, "I'm sure by now Shannon's probably told you repeatedly that Angel's the best trained murderer in the family. He's ruthless and psychotic. He does whatever Maksim orders him to without question. But his place in the hierarchy is more involved."

"How so?"

He leaned back in the seat, let out a breath. "He's Maksim's eldest son. Illegitimate, but that's never mattered to him. Angel's had free rein to do anything he's wanted since he was a kid and there's been many a rumor that their relationship was less moral than they try to make it seem."

"And that relates to your cousin being on the east coast..." Warrick pushed. He had so many things he wanted to ask Greg, so many things he wanted to understand but those questions he resolved to ask in private, away from well-meaning friends.

"Because Angel is the only one sent to kill family members. There are others in the family trained to do what he does and even if there weren't, everyone can figure out how to use a gun. But Angel is family and family are the only ones entitled to take the life of another member. Despite us leaving years ago, we still share chromosomes with the Petrovs and that makes us family whether we want to be or not." Greg shrugged then, thinking over how difficult it was going to be to tell Konstantin the exact same thing when the boy arrived with God-knew how many federal agents from New York.

Lord, the argument that would cause... Konstantin knew very little about their biological family; to him, the Sanders had been their family though he'd always viewed Greg more as a father than a brother or cousin. What he did know was not nearly enough to protect him from Angel and Greg was kicking himself for it, feeling guilt for never even telling the teenager what had happened to the mother that birthed him or the father that had helped get them to safety.

"Konstantin was a toddler, though. He can't mean to kill a child," Catherine declared, knocking the man from his thoughts.

"Was being the operative word. He's seventeen and it's sixteen in our family that was the magic number. Granddad believed that once someone was sixteen they'd seen their share of how his world worked and they could take their place in it. At least the boys, I don't know about the girls," he told her, eyes trained firmly on the beetle trudging along the floor toward the refrigerator. The corner of his mouth quirked up in a sarcastic half-smile and thought, '_I know how your kind must feel now_.'

Catherine, meanwhile, was trying and failing to hold back her horror. Sixteen? Sixteen was considered old enough to see blood and death and all forms of illegality? She wondered what Greg had seen, heard, in the time before he'd left the family.

And as though he could hear her thoughts, he told them all, "I wasn't actually sixteen when I left. It's just easier to say sixteen then to say I was fifteen and 364 days old."

"But you left in 1991. You were born in '75..."

"'76. I was born on January first of '76. When I was given my new name by the US government in '91, they also changed my birthdate to make it harder on any member of the family to find me," he explained, "And when I was formally adopted by my mother and father, I elected to keep it to continue to be just slightly too old for them to look for me in any records."

"And Konstantin?"

"His was changed as well, but it was harder since he was just a toddler and we didn't want to screw up the rest of his life," Shannon cut in. "We couldn't change the year, but we could futz with the months and days, which is what we initially did until we got in contact with his future pediatrician. At that point, we ensured that all records of his previous birthdate were destroyed."

A new voice interrupted any further questions, rough from fatigue yet still quite youthful and vibrant, "So my birthday isn't even the right one? Good Christ, what the hell have you gotten us into, Greg?"


	6. Chapter Six

"Blond haired, blue eyed, not what I was expecting for Greg's cousin," Sara admitted as she peered through the glass wall toward Grissom's office where Konstantin and Greg were sequestered with multiple marshals, Grissom, Ecklie, Brass, and the Sheriff.

Shannon smiled, laughing a little at the absurd turn their conversation had taken. With the two cousins whisked away to discuss what they could with various LVPD officials with permission from the federal government, Greg's coworkers had begun to discuss all that they knew and trying to figure out the next move, especially after it'd been announced that the car had yielded nothing – no fibers, finger prints, or even an easily identifiable tool mark. Somehow, though, they had ended up on the dissimilarities that separated Greg and Konstantin.

So far the group had noticed that while Greg seemed to prefer (and indeed, had always preferred) a more laid-back clothing style, Konst had arrived in Nevada dressed in a pair of neat, straight leg blue jeans, a tucked in black button-down shirt, and proper dress shoes with a simple black and silver belt. His hair was as wild as Greg's, yet gently tamed by the use of hair gel. The black messenger bag he'd had slung over one shoulder was made of expensive Italian leather, a stark contrast to Greg's torn and dirty polyester backpack.

An even sharper contrast lay with Konstantin's own vocabulary and tone. Greg, to the people he worked with, had always had a hint of laughter in his voice, a hint of how happy he was. He could dumb down technical words in court without sounding condescending and always made the people around him feel at easy. With Konstantin, there was an air to his words that spoke of an expensive education.

It was like night and day to them, Shannon was sure. After all, while the Vegas personnel might not recognize the name, Konstantin Novikov was a fairly rich teenager and his name had popped up more than once in the New York Times. It was a sore spot between the boy and the Marshals whom guarded him; it was a bone of contention between he and Greg, who had always hoped Konstantin would maintain a low profile.

"Most people won't think of them as being related," she admitted. "At least as he got older, it got harder and harder to see Greg's influences on Konstantin, mostly due to the fact that Konst's spent the last thirteen years in a pretty unique school."

"How so?" Catherine asked with a quirked eyebrow. She was sure it was unhealthy how curious she was about the familial dynamic that bound Greg and Konstantin and about the latter in general, but she blamed it on the situation at hand and ignored the feeling in her gut.

"It's not a traditional school. It's more Montessori then Gen Ed. They pretty much let the kids pick their curriculum, letting them learn what they want to learn, and extol the virtue of self-discovery." Shannon sat back in the chair she'd stolen from the DNA lab, and went on, "Konstantin's one of their top students, second in the class below Aoife McKie."

"Now that's a name I've heard. Aoife McKie, the granddaughter of Moira and Patrick McKie," Warrick commented.

Killian nodded, "That family's had one tragedy after another. Poor kid can never keep herself out of the papers, which is part of why Konstantin's been seen more often than we like since he's her boyfriend. But we can hardly fault him for trying to help her. She can barely keep herself from drowning in all the publicity."

"And on the topic of New York money, do I want to know how a kid raised partly by government employees and partly by Greg can afford Gucci jeans?"

"That, Catherine, is for you to ask them," Shannon answered, eyes on the man staring intently back at her.

Her partner, Kevin, was a brusque person who sugarcoated nothing nor allowed people to get away with half-assed work. At fifty-one, she knew he'd had dealt with his fair share of idiots, particularly those with vendettas against the Petrov name. He'd told her more than once that the boys would have been safer from their own colleagues if they'd been in Witness Protection; people who'd lost family members to their tyranny tended to forget that Greg and Konstantin had provided them with more information than the government had garnered on its own.

And the look on the look on his face spoke of another betrayal by one of their own.

"Ah, shit," she muttered as she excused herself, following him to a quiet alcove a few steps from Grissom's office. Once situated with her back to the wall and his own to the hallway, she asked, "Who was it?"

"I wish I knew." His voice held a measure of anger and she knew it was taking a lot from him to not start searching for the guilty party. Kevin loathed dissension in the ranks, being former military; he didn't tolerate treachery well.

"How bad is it?" Shannon swallowed around the ball in her throat, fearing the absolute worst.

"Bad. Greg's house's been trashed, Konstantin's school has been put in lockdown from bomb threats, and I'm not entirely sure that Angel hasn't already tried to get access to this building." He leaned forward, resting an arm on the glass behind her head as he employed one of their normal tactics to avoid interest by others. "I think we may have to prepare the boys for the possibility..."

"Don't," she cut him off. "Don't even toy with the thought, Kevin. Greg won't go for it and the day Konstantin agrees to abandon Aoife is the day hell freezes over." She let one hand fall to Kevin's shoulder, knowing how much it was costing him to have most of his proper options unavailable. It was a hard thing, walking the line between Greg's wishes and the government's rules, but he'd always accomplished it well.

"Well, he's going to have to think about it. Someone in the unit has fed the family information on the boys' whereabouts and after this is over, he can come back here and do whatever he wants," Kevin responded, glancing behind him to see if any of their teammates had appeared but they continued to be alone but for Lab Personnel. "But if they're dead, then he proved nothing by not going into the Program."

With a sigh, Shannon let her head fall back, her scalp pressed against the wall. She told him, "Fine, but you're the one who's telling him," and pushed the man away with a finger. "And I suggest you do it before he comes up with some idiot plan that saves Konstantin by sacrificing himself."

;;

There were two things in the world that Greg Sanders would protect above all else – his cousin and the girl who had become family to them. He would go to bat for any of his coworkers, for Grissom, but for Konstantin and Aoife, Greg would give up his own life.

And he wondered as he laid on the breakroom couch with his head on the cushion and his legs hanging over an arm, whether he'd need to do so to keep Maksim from committing whatever act of violence he'd chosen against them.

Oh, there was the choice that had been laid before him by Kevin, but Witness Protection was a coward's way out in his mind. Obscuring himself in a large city, changing his name, birthdate... they were all token measures; the family had to of known where he was, what he was doing. He refused to accept that his feeble attempts to stay out of their reach had actually worked.

Angel's appearance in Las Vegas was the biggest indicator that he'd been right to assume that Maksim had known where he'd gone.

The twinge in his side made him wince and he rubbed it with his fingertips, and, slipping his arm over his eyes, he sighed. His condo might not have been anyone's ideal place to live, but right then he wished like hell he were laying on the crappy sofa with a package of Chips Ahoy and the blanket Aoife had sent him for Christmas.

"You could have told me, you know."

Greg snorted, not moving an inch to face the younger man. "Wasn't my choice. Mom and Dad had fits every time I mentioned wanting to tell you," he said.

A moment of pause as Konstantin made a face and declared, "Bullshit." He pointed a finger at the man who was a father, brother, and cousin all in one. "You could have told me when they weren't around and you know it! If you were protecting me, fine, but don't lie to me, Greg."

"You really want to hear it? You want to hear how Angel butchered my parents in front of me when Maksim found out they were going to send me away? You want to hear how our _grandfather_ gave the the order to murder your parents? How he gave the order to kill _my _parents?"Greg knew he was letting his anger rule him, yet he was unable to stop as the anguish what he'd lived through filled him. "Do you want to hear how I watched bodies get thrown into rivers, woodlands, and even into the streets with the knowledge that no one would ever get justice for them?"

"Greg," Grissom's calm voice cut into his tirade and Sanders came back to himself suddenly, only then noticing that he had cornered Konstantin.

"Sorry."

He was too busy sprawling himself on the sofa again to see or hear Gil ask for a few minutes alone with Greg, becoming aware of it when his boss asked him, "What was that?"

"Nothing," he responded sulkily.

"That wasn't nothing, Greg." Grissom settled onto the edge of the coffee table and continued, "You're angry, probably more than you've ever been, but taking it out on your cousin won't help keep him safe."

Sanders only grunted with eyes closed.


	7. Chapter Seven

Seriozhenka Levkov was a man of broad stature and a powerful amount of self-control. For instance, he never drank, never smoked, nor allowed anyone to rile him up. He could stand in the middle of a barroom brawl and never move an inch despite whatever was thrown at him, object or person.

He was well-respected in Russia for his unflappable, stern visage and just as feared for his profession. And though the latter had been cause many times over for him to be charged with murder – his hits notorious given the calling card left behind – Russian officials had rarely ever managed to make the charges stick. The times they did... Well, the witnesses tended to disappear, either by Maksim's wish or by Maksim's money in the form of lucrative bribes.

In short, Levkov, best known as Angel, believed himself both invincible and powerful. The world he considered important looked up to him and he'd always gotten away scott-free for the actions he never thought of as wrong. He was doing the work of a living God and he was the right hand of the Devil, together as one.

So it was immensely hard for him to swallow his failure to capture Luka and Stepan. That frustration had manifested in an attempt on Luka's life, more out of a want for the stubborn boy to pay attention than the wish for him to die outright (he could easily have ended his nephew's life were that the case), but he'd failed at that as well and Angel was beginning to despair.

The influence of his father undoubtedly carried over to the US – it had to – but he was sure that walking into the LVPD Crime Lab would result in a restriction of his freedom, something he did not take well given how little he was constrained by laws and regulations. He could not simply walk in and demand Luka and Stepan handed to him, no matter what weapon or threat he used.

Not to mention, he didn't know if Luka would even agree to come with him and Angel was truly not in the mood to kill the boy outright.

Still, he'd been ordered to get the two boys home; Maksim's unreported failing health had made the man nostalgic and whatever words he wanted to have with them needed to occur soon, before age and cancer felled him.

He sighed and leaned back against the opulent headboard the Bellagio had adorned his guest suite with. Given the declining state of his father's wellbeing, Angel had been given this mission as his final before he would take over the Family though how long he would carry the title was unknown – he himself was not terribly young nor was he as fit as he'd once been – and had been gifted with a stay at the renown hotel and casino.

"You can only run from what you are for so long, boy," he told the empty room, though even Angel couldn't say whether he was talking about himself or Luka.

It mattered little, he decided, as his fate had been sealed long ago; being the eldest and most obedient of the mafia don's sons had preordained the life he'd lead was something Levkov had always believed. His life was bound to death and blood money and if he could ever sit the boys down, he'd tell them how proud he was that they were on the other side of the fence.

But that was about as likely as hell freezing over, he knew. Luka had been there the night his parents had been murdered by Angel's hand. He had seen the gun and heard the words, and when Luka had come at Angel with only his fists to fight with, the assassin had laughed at his nephew. He had gone so far as to mock the boy as he'd shoved at the elder man.

"The things we do to chase away the ones we wish to protect," he muttered and lifted his half-filled glass of vodka to his lips. Knocking back most of the remaining liquid, Angel let his mind wander and twist, trying to determine how precisely he could get a chance to at least look at Luka and Stepan, face to face.

He swallowed the last of his drink, got to his feet, and snatched up his black leather walking coat. He pulled it on roughly, feeling the weight of his favorite nine-millimeter handgun pressed lightly into his shoulder by the weight of the garment. In the interior pocket, unable to be seen by the naked eye, was the silencer barrel he'd smuggled into America despite the many hoops he'd had to jump through simply to get past customs.

With a final glance in the mirror, Angel pocketed the key to the room and grabbed the keys to the rental car, but his cellphone started to buzz incessantly at his back; he crossed back to the annoying device, plugged in to charge by the bed.

_Unknown caller_, it read.

He flipped the phone open, sliding it up to his ear, before saying, "Это ангел." _This is Angel_, his most oft-used greeting – only members of the family had this particular number and he had no reason to assume otherwise.

At least until he heard the reply and his heart beat faster in his chest for it was as if the Devil himself had risen from below, offering a deal that would skirt the line between morality and deviance. The words spoken were laden in arrogance, and the voice so smug even he was disgusted.

"Когда1?" He pressed, his mind absorbing everything he was told faster than normal. Adrenaline was kicking in as he caught the words of promise; his body was singing with the hope of a mission completed yet careful to trust the man whom had neither shared his name nor how he had come to possess the concealed phone number.

But he could tell by the accent, the pattern of speech that it was a man not born on Russian soil. His tone was too forced, the pace of it nowhere near that of a native speaker. This was a person whom, perhaps, was after money or the favor of his father, but certainly had no ties to their family.

Another quandary for Angel to ponder and he hung up with the innate gut feeling that while the information he'd been given was not a trap, he had acquired a person too dangerous to remain out of the family's control. The unknown man would either have to be neutralized or brought into the fold and the latter was not nearly as likely as the first.

Still, he had a chance at seeing the nephews he had been sent for. That, above all else, was far more imperative than removing a possible threat.

This time, when he turned away from the phone to head out into Las Vegas' brown-black night, Angel had a plan.

;;

_Blood drops. A slick trail from the living room to the foyer._

_Two bodies, hands clasped together as tightly as their weak fingers could manage, lay on the floor at his sixteen-year-old feet._

_His mother's breath stops._

_His father's heart beats one last time._

_And he is alone_.

Greg's eyes snapped open in the grim, florescent light of the trace lab and sighed. Oh, but so many years had passed since he'd last had that nightmare; a dream steeped in memories that he hated with every fiber of his being and he called it a nightmare to ignore the implications of what he'd seen that night.

A moment passed and then, with some effort, he pushed himself upright in the chair he'd fallen asleep in, head perched on the lab bench Hodges had been using which was now abandoned in favor of the table on the other side of the room.

He wondered if he should apologize for laying in the middle of the man's work; after all, getting this particular bench had always been a struggle for all the lab rats who seemed incapable of sharing some days, fighting for the space. It wasn't like it was special; there was nothing different about it than any of the others – it as the view. In a steel and glass workplace, it was always enjoyable to have the space that faced the boss' office to best know when to look like one was actually working instead of trying to get five minutes to relax.

Then Hodges turned and told him, "That kid's been looking for you," and Greg remembered why the two of them could work together yet never be polite about it. David was an arrogant kiss-ass despite being an incredibly good scientist.

Greg restrained himself from making an answering comment, because, really, Konstantin most certainly saw him on the young man's search – it wasn't like Sanders was purposely hiding from him. Instead, he slowly got to his feet, stretched, and went to the most logical place for his cousin to be: with Nick and Warrick in the break room.

He cracked his fingers as he walked, rubbing the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes in an attempt to not look as exhausted as he felt. It bothered him how bogged down he was feeling; he had spent most of the last few days sleeping or doing what very little work Grissom would allow him, all of it paperwork. His hands had not touched evidence in more than a week, so why was he so tired?

_Because you're emotionally drained_, he thought to himself. _You've been running on empty for weeks_.

Greg sighed as he reached the break room, where, as he suspected, Nick and Warrick were playing video games with his cousin. However, he was decidedly surprised to find a young redheaded teenage girl sitting quietly to the side, watching the games with a smile on her face and a glint in her eye that spoke of sadness.

Aoife Brianne McKie, the youngest member of the McKie Family. Her mother had been the late Grace Elizabeth McKie, the daughter of Patrick and Moira; the family had been involved in shipping and antiquities for nearly seventy years. They'd recently begun branching out into electronics, developing some of the equipment Greg had lusted over during his tenure as a Lab Technician.

As for the girl's father, no one had ever known who the man could be though it was assumed from Aoife's vibrantly colored hair that her father was an Irishman given the fact that her mother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents were either brunettes or blonds. She also stood at a diminutive 5'3" where the rest of the family was taller, 5'6" and above. She had remarked to Greg once, when he had visited Konstantin at school, that were she ever to take part in the family photo (a yearly event that she'd never been a part of) that she'd be the sore thumb, literally.

"Aoife," he said, sounding more like himself than he had in weeks. "What are you doing here?" he asked after he crossed over to her chair and pulled her up into a hug.

The sweet irish lilt, a constant reminder of the dual citizenship that allowed the girl to spend her school year in the states and her school breaks on the other side of the ocean, soothed him; she replied, "Konstantin took off without telling us anything. Arse." The last word was playful, though Greg could hear some of her annoyance as she continued, "So I figured now would be a good time to visit Vegas."

"Shit's hitting the fan at home, isn't it?"

"Unfortunately," she admitted. "My grandfather is verging on a stroke if he doesn't get a handle on it, so rather than be there for what will probably be a spectacular fight between he and Uncle Jason, I got the hell of out dodge." She gave him a sad little smile before adding, "But really, it's because you two need me more."

He simply pulled her into another hug, glad to see her and still terrified. Angel had leverage against Konstantin with her; he had leverage against Greg with her, which did not sit well with the man because the last thing he wanted was an innocent in the middle of his problems.

As if hearing his thoughts, she murmured, "You're my family, Greg, and this is where I need to be." She then pulled back and asked, "Where's a good place to eat around here?"

"Considering the take-out I've been living on the past few days, that's just about any place with a booth," he answered, noting the smirk on Warrick's face that spoke of how grateful he too would be for a meal not out of a plastic, tin, or cardboard container. "There's a great buffet on the strip. Like ten bucks to get in, all you can eat, and it's got all kinds of food."

"Sounds good," she said. "The wardens going to let you have a bit of parole from here or shall it just be my lonely soul going there?"

Greg's face hardened. There was no way in hell he was leaving a young woman to wander the streets of Las Vegas in the dark; he'd seen enough assault vics to know she'd be easy pickings for a perp, New York City native or not. "Oh, they'll let me out. Shannon's not stupid enough to think I'll let you go out by yourself."

"Shannon is not stupid enough to think that, no, but she does think you're stupid if you're even entertaining the thought of going outside these walls," the aforementioned woman said from the doorway. "Or do I need to remind you that your uncle's whereabouts are unknown beyond the fact that he's in Vegas."

"Shannon..." he warned, but at her raised eyebrow, he told the federal agent, "You know just as well as I do that they could have found me at any time. The government made it difficult to find me and Konstantin – not impossible – and I spent my time since getting to this country refusing to be scared of that possibility. If he's going to kill me, it's going to happen whether or not people want to accept it."

"It's not about wanting to accept it, Greg! It's the fact that you seem to think it's an unavoidable fact!" She shot back, still horrified by her friend's adamant statements that his death was the likely outcome of this situation.

As he thought over how best to explain to Killian that unless she expected him to live in the lab, there was no way to keep him from being found by Angel and even then, the assassin would find a way in if he had to, Grissom arrived with Brass a step behind.

Both looked grim.

"Greg," Gil started, feeling sick to his stomach as he thought of the message he had for his subordinate. God, but he'd always hated this; the helpless feeling that came with the news everyone dreaded, "The San Gabriel Police called me a few minutes ago."

Aoife took Konstantin's hand. Greg took in a breath.

"They needed to ensure that you were here since there'd been no activity on your credit cards and none of your neighbors had seen you," Grissom went on, knowing he didn't need to explain, but needing the moment to build up to the news. "They're gone. I'm sorry, Greg. Your father died at the house and your mother died on the way to the hospital."

1When?


	8. Chapter Eight

There were only a handful of places that Greg ever thought of as calm, serene: the desert at Dusk, right at the edge of the city where the glitz and the glam had yet to build on golden sand; the quiet, intellectual feel of the library at Konstantin's school, a place where silence was respected and the books coated shelves like paint on a wall with leather-spines and gold-leaf edges.

And then there was the roof of CSI, where the heat of the day's sun still warmed the soles of his shoes as it radiated from the surface. Where, despite it being a roof, people had brought up some pilfered chairs and an ashtray, and a doorstop to keep their only way back into the building available.

Here, Greg had spent a number of breaks thinking, worrying. When the letters had started arriving and he had started disappearing, he had considered it humorous that none of his coworkers had thought to look there, but then that was part of the problem. Part of why he was so resistant to their help though he wished desperately he could have them for friends.

"I don't think I've ever seen you smoke before."

"I've smoked plenty. Just need to be in a really fucked up mood for me to want to," Greg muttered in reply, flicking ash from the cigarette into the tray and glancing up at Sara. "Dad was a smoker. I always thought these would kill him..."

She rocked back on her heels for a moment, her mind still spinning with all the things she'd learned in the past few weeks, before deciding on the chair opposite him and collapsing into it.

Sidle was quiet for only a few minutes, not nearly long enough for him to cope with her sudden presence in the one place he'd always been able to hide from the team. Then she was speaking and Greg resisted the urge to scream at her to leave him alone, to beg for time by himself – until he processed what she was saying and his mouth went dry.

"I'm sorry, you know," she said in a low tone, "I just assumed that you'd come to us. Warrick and Nick, Catherine... they're all so boisterous and you were pretty loud sometimes. I guess I thought that eventually you'd find your fit without any of us changing."

"I never asked you guys to change." He took another drag from the cigarette and let the tobacco soothe him. "I never wanted you to change, but compromising a little, that would have been appreciated."

She nodded, lifting the pack of Marlboros to grab a stick before setting the entire thing back down on his chair arm. "So..." she started, cut off by Greg before she could get anything more out.

"We can't start over, Sara. I've done it so many times before that I'm sick of it," he admitted. "I can't go forward by ignoring what's happened and right now," Greg paused, looking away and steeling himself, before finally admitting, "I don't want to forgive and forget. I've done it – it just makes the pain worse, until you're left with the reality that a friendship based on ignorance of things that have happened isn't really a friendship."

Greg's heart twisted at those words, recalling Joshua Sanders, the boy who had become his cousin legally, and how their easy camaraderie had shattered when he discovered his past. They weren't cruel to each other at holidays; Josh never spoke bad of his cousin and Greg never spoke ill of him, but there was always a touch of tension around them and it hurt that he'd never been able to explain all the things that Josh had been disturbed by.

"I wasn't going to say that we should," she smirked. "I was going to ask if you wanted to get out of here for a little while. Aoife's still hungry and Grissom's tied up with the Marshals. All we have to do is skirt around QD, take the stairs to autopsy and sneak out the back to the garage."

"There's another way out?" he asked, incredulous. "I've been here longer than you and no one ever told me that!"

"Someone probably would have, if ti wasn't a new thing. It's that door that's supposed to be a fire escape but when they cut back on the budget last year, they turned the alarm off on it," she admitted. "We probably shouldn't be using it for another entrance, but no one's stopped us yet."

"All right." Greg nodded, lips curved into a gentle smile as he rose from the seat. His head tilted back as he stretched and he took in the stars that twinkled dully above him, almost washed out by the nighttime glow of Las Vegas' lights.

"I was there the night they died," he admitted. "My biological parents. Maksim found out that they were planning to send me away, take me away from any place he could reach, and he was pissed. He sent Angel, and," Greg sighed, "I watched them die, Sara. On the floor.

"I tried to fight him, but he was bigger than me and stronger and I don't know where I got it, but I had Papa's knife in my hand. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to see him die, only..." He looked away from the stars and to her, eyes settling on hers as he continued, "I didn't want to be like my grandfather. I didn't want to know what it was like to kill a man because I was mad."

Sanders lost himself in the memory that had plagued him for so many years: the tang of blood that had muddied the air, the almost silent walk of his uncle as he trespassed in the Petrov home, the way Greg had seethed with rage as Angel had laughed at the teenager.

"He just stood there, after, and told me that one day, when I was a man, I'd have the chance to kill him and I'd do it. And it still makes me want to be sick because I think I could – I think I could kill him and I wouldn't care." Greg closed his eyes, unable to take the pure sympathy written on her face, as though she knew how horrible he had felt that night with his mother's blood coloring the soles of his shoes red.

Sara reached out and closed his hand in hers, saying nothing as her phone began to ring incessantly in her pocket. She ignored it, knowing who would be on the other end and not really giving a damn what Grissom wanted.

It wouldn't be long before she would regret that.

;;

He woke up in the hospital, several days later, with a pounding headache and double vision. His entire left side burned in agony when he tried to move; it took more than a few minutes for him to realize his left arm was bound in a cast from just above the elbow, down to his fingers. His leg was elevated from the bed in a padded sling – traction.

What the hell had happened?

"Greg," Catherine called. Her voice had been so soft, he wasn't sure she'd actually said anything until she said his name again, "Greg?"

He opened his mouth to speak, only to find his mouth parched and gritty. He lifted his right hand instead, fingers finding the bedrail and grasping it tightly as though he were going to lift himself upwards but he had no leverage and Catherine knew it.

She waited a moment, letting him learn for himself that movement was futile. Between the broken leg, arm, ribs, and collarbone, Greg was going to be dependent on a wheelchair when he eventually came off bedrest and she doubted he'd be too pleased with that. But that was for Konstantin and the doctors to tell him, not her. Rather, she reached for the ice chips on the rolling tray table and, once he stopped struggling to move, lifted it to his lips.

"Do you remember anything?" She asked after he'd finished sucking on the first piece.

Licking his lips, he contemplated whatever had occurred prior to his latest stay in the hospital. Clearly he'd been involved in some sort of incident, yet he could only recall heading down the stairs from the roof with Sara behind him while she bitched on the phone at Grissom. Strangely, there was nothing after that until the moment he opened his eyes in the florescent lit room. "No," he croaked finally.

Willows sighed. She truly didn't want to be the one to tell him what had landed himself – and Aoife – in the nearest hospital while Angel's body laid on a slab in the morgue. Doc Robbins had a set of stitches on his head for his involvement; David was still having a bit of double vision from the blow he sustained trying to protect Mandy.

It was a sad fact for Catherine that she hadn't truly believed Greg's declarations about his uncle. While the marshals had made for a very convincing argument that the man was responsible for a multitude of deaths, she had a difficult time understanding why he had been allowed to parade free of justice even in Russia and why Greg was cowed by the man's mere presence in Vegas. How easily he accepted his own death as the outcome; she'd been hard-pressed to see what was happening as anything more than a parody of an actual case.

No man, close to sixty, could be such a perfect killer that he couldn't be caught. It just wasn't possible.

And then Angel had stalked into the lab, as though he owned the building. Knocking down Robbins as he came through a back door that no one was supposed to know about or use, Levkov had managed to make his way onto the main floor and as no one but Greg had an idea what the man looked like, no one knew to stop him until he was bearing down on the young CSI with gun drawn.

A bold move for a man surrounded by federal agents.

"_You'll never get past the door, Serio," Greg told him, voice deadly calm and even-toned. "You kill me, they'll kill you. He'll never see my hand."_

"_It's not your hand he wants to see, boy." Levkov's face was the picture of deadly serenity, his lips drawn tight against the frustration of dealing with the stubborn Sanders. "The old man has requested you and I have promised that it's you he shall see. Not your hand, or the infant's."_

_Aoife's hand on Konstantin's mouth stopped the latter from commenting; Greg hid his gratuity for that as best he could, saying firmly, "I won't go."_

"_You'd defy him? An aged man on his deathbed?"_

"_I defied him every day for nearly sixteen years until the day I left Archangel'sk. What makes you believe I would continue to do anything but?" Greg's question was unanswerable, and he looked down the barrel of the Colt .357 Magnum revolver. If he had looked away, he might have seen the 9 millimeter peeking out from the folds of the leather coat, but all he could do was stare at the vessel that might bring about his death. "I won't go back there, Angel."_

"_Defiance of a God..."_

_Greg exploded. "He is no God! He is a man of flesh and of blood and you said yourself that he's dying – mortals die, Angel, not Gods. You may believe that you are the ordained son of a deity, that may be why you call yourself by that nickname, but you are just the bastard child of a man who deals in death."_

_The gun that had been dangerously close to his face was pulled back as the elder man backhanded him to the floor and Aoife's cry caught the attention of Mandy and Archie._

"Took you guys a while to notice what was going on," Greg huffed out, eyes catching Catherine's as the memories flooded back.

"Gil had told everyone to back off for a while. He thought maybe if we didn't crowd you so much, you'd calm down a little," she admitted.

Grissom had been pretty sure that a lot of Greg's anger came from how little privacy he'd been able to garner over the course of his time stuck in the lab, so under his orders, the team and the lab techs had tried to distance themselves as best they could in a workplace where there were few hiding spots. They'd all made note when Greg, Konstantin, and Aoife had disappeared into one of the handful of rooms with mostly solid walls, though, but mostly due to the fact that Greg had filched Hodges PSP for the girl and conned Brass into bringing back a pizza for the trio.

It was only after Aoife had yelped that anyone noticed the man in the black jacket and then all hell had broken loose: the marshals had gone running ahead of the LVPD for the room, only to stop short when he grabbed Aoife around the neck and the muzzle of the gun pressed tightly to her temple. It was several tense minutes of listening to Greg and Angel go back and forth in Russian before the room was plunged into darkness; Warrick's string of curses would have been almost comical if not for the pitch-black state of their crime lab.

"_What the fucking hell is going on here?! Greg!" Brown called into the room, trying to recall the boundaries of the space as well as the weather channel's forecast for the night._

"_I'm all right. Aoife!"_

_  
"I'm here," she said weakly from the floor._

"_Serio," Greg's voice rang out harshly, a surprise for those in the room. "Serio," he sing-songed, "I never heard the door. You're still here." The eerie, chilling quality to Greg's words made the hair on Shannon's neck stand up and she realized that it wasn't Sanders in the room with them at the moment – Luka Petrov, the groomed heir of Maksim Tosha Petrov was._

_And he was decidedly pissed._


	9. Chapter Nine

Greg never told anyone what growing up in the Petrov family had been like or why sixteen had been such an important age. He'd never told anyone how he'd spent his summers as a boy or how he'd been forced to drop out of school at the age of 15 when he was no longer mandated by the state to attend because Maksim wanted the boy to spend more time with Angel and himself.

He could never bring himself to verbalize the things he had seen, the things he'd been taught, during that time and he truly regretted what had happened that night; how easily he had switched from easy-going Greg Sanders to the calculating, angry Luka Petrov. The bitterness that had fueled the change was still coursing through him, nine days and a light coma later.

"You know you're not supposed to be walking around yet."

"I know. There's that whole thing about caring though."

Konstantin snorted at his cousin's response, remaining at the man's side as he leaned against the edge of the building. "You okay?"

"Not really," Greg murmured. He looked at the people passing through the doors of the hospital, the cars passing by, and tried to figure out how best to explain to the young man how truly destroyed he felt in the face everything that had happened. But without thinking, his mouth opened and he spoke, "I killed a man, Konstantin."

"After he shot you," Novikov responded. "After he threatened Aoife and me. Hell, after he ran through your workplace with three traitor Marshals, assaulting your coworkers," he continued, "There's a difference between killing a person in cold-blood for no other reason than you wanted to and killing a person in defense of your own life!"

Greg hissed, "You think I don't know that?" He stared at Konstantin, waiting for a response and prepared to argue with him over it, when another voice, intelligent and masculine, cut in.

"You know it, Greg – you don't believe it," Grissom started, appearing directly in front of Sanders and refusing to let him look away. Gil had things he had to say and he knew Greg wouldn't want to hear it, because facing one's demons, even under the guidance of well-trained therapist, was rarely easy or comforting. But they needed to be said, now before the body was released and Shannon spilled the news about precisely which agents had betrayed the man.

"You were trained from a young age to take Maksim's place," he started. "They showed you the bodies and the guns, and you must have been terrified the first time they killed someone in front of you. But you went to school and you put all your energy into _forgetting_ what they taught you, so they pushed even harder. They made you hold the guns and the knives."

"They made me do more than that, Gris." The whisper had nearly been lost in the wind, yet Grissom's heart still twisted as his theory – that Maksim and his lackeys had tried to dehumanize Greg into someone more like Angel – was given credence.

And before Gil could get another word out, Greg went on, "They wanted me to be like them. My sixteenth birthday, they were going to have me..." he slung his head back in what Grissom finally understood as a comforting gesture, a distracting motion that helped him to keep speaking, "Everyone in the family, they have to prove they have the right to be there and you have to prove it by showing that you're willing to do whatever Maksim says."

"What does that mean?" Konstantin asked, unsure of so much now that his world had been turned on its head. He was getting a crash course in all the secrets that Greg had shouldered to protect him from, finding out precisely what his life might have been if he hadn't been spirited away in the dead of night.

Oh, god, but he'd thrown up when the Marshals had started to explain a lot of what they'd known; the things they hadn't shared with Konstantin at Greg's demand. The elder had forced them to keep pictures, videos, records, and statements from him, trying to give Novikov the childhood Greg had been denied and it had hurt to look at the photographs given to them by another informant of a scared child holding onto a knife in the gut of a person who'd dared to cross Maksim.

"Sixteen is how old Maksim was when he killed the first time," Greg said, his tone wavering slightly. "So he always believed that anyone over sixteen should too, to know what it was like to 'watch the miracle of God's creation at the end.'" He took a breath, adding, "And I begged and pleaded to not be asked to do it. He slapped me and told me not to be an embarrassment or he'd kill me instead of whatever poor guy he chose.

"Mama and Papa, they didn't want to see me end up like Maksim any more than I did, so they and my aunt and uncle worked out a plan to get us out of there."

"But your grandfather found out," Gil supplied when the younger paused.

"Yeah. He did and I knew I never wanted to become him, a man who could kill one of his own children – _two_ of his own children – and threaten his grandson without any emotion." Greg's eyes caught his and locked, and he spoke again, "I knew if I killed someone I would become him. It wouldn't matter if I could justify it, Gris, because it would mean that I could kill a person without hesitation.

"I'm a murderer, Grissom."

"No, Greg, you're only a man who has had to make extraordinary decisions to keep yourself alive. And," Grissom told him, "I am proud of you."

"For what? Being faster to pull the trigger?" Greg pushed, not ready to accept that perhaps he had done exactly the right thing at the time nor ready to accept that the man who's approval he had long sought was standing before him to declare his pride in Sanders.

But Grissom didn't elaborate, only repeated himself before turning his attention to Konstantin and telling him, "I need a minute with Greg alone." He watched the boy hesitate, unsure if it was safe to leave his cousin in Grissom's hands, and simply waited patiently until Konstantin pointed at the door and walked away though he was clearly visible in the lobby.

The next words from Grissom's mouth stunned Greg, and he wondered why anyone would put him up for a commendation for what he'd done: He'd shot someone. In the lab. With evidence feet away that more than likely was tainted from the GSR.

His heart was beating faster; he felt his hands go clammy and Greg swallowed against the growing ball in his throat.

"You're not a murderer, Greg. No one can ever accuse you of being one," Grissom assured, the surety in the words strong enough to push Greg the last few steps into the tears he'd been holding back.

He hadn't cried in years, not since he'd taken one last look at the bloody, broken bodies of his parents on the floor of their home and walked out into the cold, intent on never returning. Every hurt, every pain, Greg had held inside, so fearful that he would fulfill Maksim's expectations that he shoved it down behind a veneer of jokes and inappropriate antics.

Grissom, for his part, just stood there, unsure of what to do; Greg had turned away from him, his sobs nearly silent. He laid his hand on Sander's shoulder, moving closer on instinct, and hoped his presence might offer some solace, but Greg shrugged him off and they stood there, two men leaning against the side of a hospital, saying nothing.

;;

Angel's body disappeared from the morgue the same day Greg was released from the hospital and left in it's place was a letter.

A clean white envelope with an equally white piece of paper, folded neatly into threes with perfect cursive handwriting on the front. It said only one name, sending a chill down the spines of those who understood who Luka Petrov was.

Greg refused to read it.


End file.
